Thank you!

I had my student conferences this week, and I’d just like to say I am the luckiest new TA in the history of TAing.

A little background. I am teaching 24 students Freshmen Composition, one of two requited English courses that everyone has to take. I’ll be teaching the other one in two different sections next year. But at least the second one has sections. This one, everyone has to take the exact same class with the same number of papers and written words and covering the same ground. Ground that many of them covered in high school.

Granted, every teacher is different, and many of us have chosen some ideas that aren’t quite the norm. Some of us have presentations in our classes and some decided that the students will get enough of that in other classes. Some chose an argument paper, and some didn’t. Some have daily journals, and some don’t.

That said, this is pretty much exactly the class that you’d expect everyone to take their freshman year of college. The biggest focus is making sure that everyone learns MLA/APA/Chicago/something about in-text citations so that they don’t get accused of plagiarism later in their college careers. Other than that, it’s refresher for those of us who didn’t go straight from high school into college.

I have the best students. They weren’t sure about me at first, but once they realized that I want to have as much fun with this as possible, they really opened up to some possibilities. They’re creative, they’re intelligent, and they have great things to say. Their writing quality was already good before they ever set pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) in room 229. I. Am. Blessed.

That’s not to say that I haven’t had my struggles. They are a VERY quiet class. Today might have been the first semblance of a real discussion, and that was because I had a student at the front of the class. But besides being in the afternoon nap time, I have really enjoyed teaching these people.

*raises a glass* So here’s to EN 111, Section 23! And here’s hoping that I get as many classes this awesome as I can!